3 ‐ Experience Generation

Bibliophages

Bibliophages are tiny mechanical creatures that digest books, releasing the stored knowledge as XP in the process. Using a bibliophage on a bookshelf will turn it into an infected bookshelf. Infected bookshelves slowly release XP orbs as the bibliophages degrade them, eventually turning into blocks of Forgotten Dust.

While infected, bookshelves undergo the following processes:

1. XP production – works similarly to mob spawner mechanics. Bookshelves have a minimum and maximum spawn delay. Upon being placed, the bookshelf generates a random number between the two bounds and waits for that number of ticks, before producing an XP orb. The delay then resets and the process repeats

2. Infection – Infected bookshelves can infect other bookshelves adjacent to (directly touching) them. Every second, a given infected bookshelf has a 2.0% chance to infect one adjacent bookshelf, if there are any present, converting it into another infected bookshelf.

3. Decay – Each infected bookshelf has a set durability. Every time an infected bookshelf produces an XP orb, its decay value is incremented. When its decay value becomes equal to its durability, the bookshelf decays. Prior to update v2.2.3, infected bookshelves decayed into Forgotten Dust blocks. From update v2.2.3 onwards, infected bookshelves will drop 4x Forgotten Dust upon decaying.

Other Mechanics

Apart from vanilla bookshelves, bibliophages can also feed on archiver's bookshelves and enchanted bookshelves. Archiver's bookshelves take twice as long to decay as ordinary bookshelves. Enchanted bookshelves take twice as long to decay as well, and produce orbs that are twice the value.

While vanilla bookshelves give enchantment tables 1.0 power, Archiver's bookshelves give them 1.5 power, while Enchanted bookshelves give them 2 power.

Infected bookshelves cannot be harvested, even with silk touch. If broken, the bookshelf will drop a random amount of XP proportional to its remaining durability. However, this amount will be far less than its lifetime production would otherwise yield. It will also drop 1 forgotten dust.

Lastly, infected bookshelves can be disabled and enabled by shift-right-clicking with a Staff of Attunement. Disabled bookshelves will not produce XP, infect adjacent bookshelves, or decay. The status of a bookshelf and its remaining lifetime can be queried by right-clicking with the staff.

Vanilla, Archiver's and Enchanted bookshelves (top), their infected counterparts (bottom), and Forgotten Dust

Summary of Properties

Block	Orb Value	Spawns	Total XP generated	Avg Spawn Delay	Avg XP per second	Avg Lifespan
Infected Bookshelf	6	100	600 (20Lv)	200 ticks (10s)	0.6	1000s (17min)
Infected Archiver's Bookshelf	6	200	1200 (28Lv)	200 ticks (10s)	0.6	2000s (33min)
Infected Enchanted Bookshelf	12	200	2400 (37Lv)	200 ticks (10s)	1.2	2000s (33min)

Future Plans

Bibliophages are intended to be an early-game alternative to mob-dependent XP farms. In the future, I intend to introduce ways to enhance Bibliophage XP generation as well as other more powerful methods of XP generation.